A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects.

First edition of this landmark work—among the earliest and most influential feminist manifestos—presenting a groundbreaking critique of the social and educational structures that enforced women’s subordination. Octavo, original boards, sympathetically rebacked, printed spine label. [Windle A5a; PMM 242; Goldsmiths' 15367]. In very good condition with scattered toning. Housed in a custom clamshell box. Exceptionally rare in the original boards. “Wollstonecraft’s major work caused an outcry when it was published and is hailed as a cornerstone of feminism…. The central theme of the work on women’s rights was that they should be educated to carry a responsibility in society equal to that of men. In disagreement with Rousseau… Wollstonecraft urged ‘rational fellowship instead of slavish obedience” (Legacies of Genius 64). "Although Wollstonecraft is best known as a feminist thinker, her philosophies are not limited to women’s issues… Wollstonecraft advocates liberty and equality for all humanity. Advancing arguments for political rights, she argues for the removal of traditional injustices of rank, property, class, and gender… The key to freedom lies in the reasoning individual conscience, not in laws or dogma… Wollstonecraft adamantly asserts that education inculcating reason will eventually emancipate all humankind from all forms of servitude (political, sexual, religious, or economic)” (Great Thinkers of the Western World, 322-327). The landmark work was written in a “plain and direct style, and it was this as well as the idea of writing a book on the subject at all, which caused the outcry that ensued… she argued for equality of education for both sexes… and co-education. It was a rational plea for a rational basis to the relation between the sexes… Its chief object was to show that women were not the playthings of men but ought to be their equal partners, which they could be only if they were educated in the same way” (PMM 242).…